Free Buccaneer by Dudley Pope Page A

Drake ‘El Draco’, sir; before we’ve finished they’ll be shivering at the thought of ‘El Juddo’.”
    “La Judda,” Yorke corrected. “We’ll establish her fame as the ruthless woman pirate, along with Mrs Bullock, once she is sure which side a man’s heart beats.”
    Mrs Bullock’s mistake over Wilson had, within an hour, become a legend in Kingsnorth and “Where is Bullock’s heart?” a rallying cry for everyone sailing in the Griffin and a source of acute embarrassment for her husband.
    Yorke slapped at the mosquitoes which were attacking his face, wrist and hands, delighted at finding a meal at this time of night without having to fly through clouds of tobacco smoke. “Get your lantern and read out those names, Saxby, the offshore breeze should set in any minute.”
    Saxby hurried aft and a few moments later Yorke saw the series of flashes as he struck steel against flint to kindle some tinder and light the lamp.
    Twenty minutes, he decided; in twenty minutes they would be leaving Barbados. In many ways he felt more excited than when he first left England four years ago, bound for the Caribbee islands to take charge of the family plantation. His father and his brother had been wounded only a few months before and the Royalist cause was collapsing in England. It had been the beginning of one great adventure – and the end of an old one. The old one had taught him the bitterness of being on the losing side in two battles and the art of escaping. He was not yet sure what he would learn from the new.
    The Griffin was to sail by the light of a half moon. Down here in the tropics it was lying on its back like a slice of melon on a plate, instead of standing vertical as in the northern latitudes. It would light the Griffin ’s way – to where?
    In many ways it was a good thing that he had been too busy in the last few hours to think of destinations. Barbados stood out alone in the Atlantic like a sentry box in front of a row of tents extending more or less north and south, the island of La Grenade at the bottom and St Martin at the top, and a dozen islands in between.
    He shivered in the darkness although it was hot and the air was loud with the chatter of tree frogs. Until now he had always enjoyed a tropical night: the stars were brighter than he could ever describe in letters to George and even now he could not get used to seeing the Plough so low on the northern horizon, the north star only thirteen or fourteen degrees above the horizon, little more than a hand’s span. And the night was never quite dark; one rarely needed a lantern to find one’s way.
    Now, for the first time, the night seemed to be the edge of the world; very soon he was going to jump over it, like a madman walking along a clifftop. Round him were enemies. Here in Barbados there were the Roundheads, a majority but still biding their time for Penn and Venables to come. They were enemies because he was a Royalist, but chief among them now was Wilson. Stubborn with all the inflexibility of the weak-willed, he hated Ned because of Kingsnorth, and a man always hated the one he intended to wrong. Wilson would say that Ned had stolen his wife – that was how Wilson would see it now: Aurelia was the perfect wife upon whom he had always lavished love and gifts. He would forget the whippings that woke servants and were, Yorke now realized, the only way the wretched man could get any sexual gratification. Yorke had all the normal man’s horror of strange sexual habits and the desperate lengths to which they could drive their victims.
    Yet they were no excuse for the rest of it, he thought savagely. Any penniless man marrying an heiress was obviously wise to use her money to improve their life together – but Wilson had everything transferred to his name and put in his power before revealing his impotence and vicious habits. Then he could throw Aurelia out of the house at any time, penniless and for that matter naked if he chose to claim the